After decades of discussion, EU votes for unified patent system

Cost of getting a patent will drop; but that's not necessarily a good thing.

The European Parliament voted today to create a unitary patent system and patent court, after discussing the idea for more than 30 years. The proposal, which passed on a 484-164 vote, may lower the cost of getting a European patent by as much as 80 percent. The unitary patent court will come online on January 1, 2014, or when at least thirteen member states ratify the proposal.

Much of the high cost of getting a European patent is due to translation costs. Under the new rules, writing the patent in English, German, or French will be enough to pass muster; they won't have to be translated into the local language of every country where they take effect. The language issue was a sticking point for Spain and Italy, which have said they would opt out of the new system because their languages weren't given the same prominence.

In the new system, getting a patent may cost as little as 4,725 Euros ($6,144), as opposed to the 36,000 euros ($46,829) needed today, according to the European Commission. In the US, the cost of getting patents varies by location, technology type, and law firm but can cost as much as $30,000.

Of course, more patents aren't always the best thing for innovation. Patents are already hard to decipher from the legalese they're written in in the US; it's an odd idea that businesses should be forced to avoid infringing patents in languages that they may not understand. And a spokesperson for a tech industry group that includes Google, Oracle, and IBM voiced reservations about the new system. “While the new rules may reduce the cost of filing patents, our concern is how to appeal against bad patents,” he told the New York Times.

Unifying patent power in a single court isn't necessarily a good thing, either. The US has had a unified patent appeals court since 1982, and it has dramatically expanded the sphere of what technologies are patentable.

In 2007, a report challenging the current system of country-by-country litigation was issued by the European Commission, the executive branch of European government. Evidently that report was taken to heart.

1. Why do we still honour national patent boundaries? Are ideas somehow limited to national boundaries? Of course not, they are global and any patent should be written in the language of the inventor, then translated into either english or chinese, to then be honoured by all states when held up in court. Nations should honour the verdict of a foreign court, unless more local courts override it.

2. As the Apple - Samsung cases around the world demonstrate, national sentiments create a strong bias. The american Apple - Samsung case for example was judged by a "jury of peers", all of which happen to be american, just like Apple. That's just not good enough. I don't know how the EU-proposal addresses these concerns.

3. I think the EU ideal, a patent registered in any EU-nation should be valid in all of the EU, is equally valid on a global scale. Any patent registered anywhere should be honoured world-wide, provided a translation is available in a major language (english or chinese). The EU proposal as is does NOT require this, and is therefore flawed. It misses the opportunity to be relevant to the world and is bound to break in the future.

Edit: at this time I am voted up 9, down -15. Taking gender imbalance into account, I am actually getting a lot of up-votes... As the comments below demonstrate, people don't even try to understand the points made, nor appreciate their pivotal importance (but that is unfortunately the rule).

No inventor wants protection in his country alone, that would be worthless and even discriminatory. Nations should submit their patents globally, on behalf of their inventors, which means submission to a global repository of patents, properly translated into english or chinese. Local rulings should base themselves on this repository and _not_ on some arbitrarily limited local reality (ego).

With this in mind let's revisit the points I made:

1. International parties seek resolution of their trade conflict, then what follows should go like this: A suitable court/nation must be found by the conflicting parties, and it provides a possibly flawed but unbiased ruling. as both parties accepted the court, the ruling binds the parties, which means that it is by necessity the globally default ruling associated with them. Because of their sovereignty, local courts can override the default binding, when sought by one of the parties to do so, but their rulings come with significant downsides (including costs). Local courts must be aware of the global political effects their decisions can have.

2. The case of Apple vs Samsung resembles a man taking his competitor to court with the jury consisting of his nephews. The trial should have been thrown out and would be by the Founding Fathers that proposed US-law. Laws may have allowed the trial, but when everyone turns a blind eye to this obvious flaw, something is very very wrong, and we insist on doing things the wrong way. The EU-proposal may or may not address the problem of bias, but it is relevant even in the case of the EU.

3. The EU proposal, made for a multi-state community, can be analyzed by scaling it up to the global community, and we must do so, because it exists in the global community _as much_ as it provides local inventors protection. Scaling shows that the proposal does not address the core problems. We must at least maintain a global repository of patents and base local resolution mechanisms on it. Such a repository requires an official language in order to provide global access to the patent. The EU-proposal, instead of potentially leading the global community, in this respect sticks its head in the mud by not requiring an english translation.

1. Why do we still honour national patent boundaries? Are ideas somehow limited to national boundaries? Of course not, they are global and any patent should be written in the language of the inventor, then translated into either english or chinese, to then be honoured by all states when held up in court. Nations should honour the verdict of a foreign court, unless more local courts override it.

2. As the Apple - Samsung cases around the world demonstrate, national sentiments create a strong bias. The american Apple - Samsung case for example was judged by a "jury of peers", all of which happen to be american, just like Apple. That's just not good enough. I don't know how the EU-proposal addresses these concerns.

3. I think the EU ideal, a patent registered in any EU-nation should be valid in all of the EU, is equally valid on a global scale. Any patent registered anywhere should be honoured world-wide, provided a translation is available in a major language (english or chinese). The EU proposal as is does NOT require this, and is therefore flawed. It misses the opportunity to be relevant to the world and is bound to break in the future.

If you want a nation to legally protect your ideas you damn well should translate it into their language. Also not all nations agree on what is patentable so why should your nation be bound by the legal decisions of others. Honestly your ideas seem totally ludicrous to me.

I wonder whether national courts will be able to overturn the international (EU) patent office, or if the patent office will be the sole entity able to invalidate patents.

Experience in the US shows the patent office lets way too much get through (they get paid application fees I guess...) and it takes the courts to sort out the crap. If the courts didn't have the authority to fix the patent office's mistakes, the system would be even more of a disaster than it is (which is saying a lot).

Oh great. EU patent office is already granting patents on software despite the law saying it's forbidden (sadly the law was not written in blood on asbestos so the corrupt assholes are still granting software patents after doing some very dubious interpretation of the law).Handing even more patents to the same corrupt people sounds like an excellent idea. What could go wrong?

Seems that EU is all about corruption these days. Every decent idea (I like EU as an idea) gets messed up by the massive corruption, with EC and council of ministers leading the pack. At least they got the nobel peace prize for their efforts to turn all of EU in to a few super rich and rest beggars.

The language issue was a sticking point for Spain and Italy, which have said they would opt out of the new system because their languages weren't given the same prominence.

Cry babies.

English: Primary language of international trade, obvious choice, as well as the official language of three member states (England, Ireland, Malta)

French: Language of three member states (Belgium, France, Luxembourg) as well as a common language by heritage all over Europe with regions of different countries using it. Then throw in Switzerland and you've got one you want.

German: Common language in engineering, spoken by a number of member states, as well as different regions (see France above).

Spanish simply doesn't make sense, nor does Italian. neither nation are industrial power houses, or economic power houses, and their languages aren't as wide spread.

Hell if anything Hungry should be the one bitching, their language is very wide-spread and would make more logical sense then either Spanish or Italian.

The sooner Spain and Italy get kicked out of the EU the better, freaking lying, corrupt, prats.

You are saying that those countries are crybabies because they require patents to be published in the language their citizens speak in return for state protected intellectual property rights? Seriously? What does Spanish society gain from a patent that most people cannot understand? Why should they take on the burden to protect such IP?

Wait. This actually passed? How come we only heard about it a few days ago then? I hope they made getting a patent as strict as possible, and I really hope they didn't model this EU patent law after the German patent law.

1. Why do we still honour national patent boundaries? Are ideas somehow limited to national boundaries? Of course not, they are global and any patent should be written in the language of the inventor, then translated into either english or chinese, to then be honoured by all states when held up in court. Nations should honour the verdict of a foreign court, unless more local courts override it.

2. As the Apple - Samsung cases around the world demonstrate, national sentiments create a strong bias. The american Apple - Samsung case for example was judged by a "jury of peers", all of which happen to be american, just like Apple. That's just not good enough. I don't know how the EU-proposal addresses these concerns.

3. I think the EU ideal, a patent registered in any EU-nation should be valid in all of the EU, is equally valid on a global scale. Any patent registered anywhere should be honoured world-wide, provided a translation is available in a major language (english or chinese). The EU proposal as is does NOT require this, and is therefore flawed. It misses the opportunity to be relevant to the world and is bound to break in the future.

i support the idea of english or chinese ( chinese beign so different from all western languages that it makes sense to make an exception) it makes sense, making it easier to understand and examine the patents. Disregarding spanish is stupid as is the second most spoken language worldwide that sounds like a dick move, looks to me like the french and the germans are just disregarding the spaniards and italians solely on the base of their current economic situation which doesn't really make sense from a patent standpoint.

Wait. This actually passed? How come we only heard about it a few days ago then? I hope they made getting a patent as strict as possible, and I really hope they didn't model this EU patent law after the German patent law.

The language issue was a sticking point for Spain and Italy, which have said they would opt out of the new system because their languages weren't given the same prominence.

Cry babies.

English: Primary language of international trade, obvious choice, as well as the official language of three member states (England, Ireland, Malta)

French: Language of three member states (Belgium, France, Luxembourg) as well as a common language by heritage all over Europe with regions of different countries using it. Then throw in Switzerland and you've got one you want.

German: Common language in engineering, spoken by a number of member states, as well as different regions (see France above).

Spanish simply doesn't make sense, nor does Italian. neither nation are industrial power houses, or economic power houses, and their languages aren't as wide spread.

Hell if anything Hungry should be the one bitching, their language is very wide-spread and would make more logical sense then either Spanish or Italian.

The sooner Spain and Italy get kicked out of the EU the better, freaking lying, corrupt, prats.

You are saying that those countries are crybabies because they require patents to be published in the language their citizens speak in return for state protected intellectual property rights? Seriously? What does Spanish society gain from a patent that most people cannot understand? Why should they take on the burden to protect such IP?

What do they gain? Savings for one thing, since they wont need to run their own patent office... and given the hole Spain and Italy are in every little bit helps.

Additionally, there are many other nations in the EU that don't seem to have an issue with their language not being represented...

So Yes, they are being crybabies, they didn't get their way so they are going to throw a fit.

i support the idea of english or chinese ( chinese beign so different from all western languages that it makes sense to make an exception) it makes sense, making it easier to understand and examine the patents. Disregarding spanish is stupid as is the second most spoken language worldwide that sounds like a dick move, looks to me like the french and the germans are just disregarding the spaniards and italians solely on the base of their current economic situation which doesn't really make sense from a patent standpoint.

my two cents...

Spanish might be the second most spoken language world wide... but this isn't a world wide office... this is a EUROPEAN OFFICE... and in the EUROPEAN UNION. Most of the people who speak Spanish are in the Americas, not the EU

As I pointed out above, English (widely spoken, international language of trade), German (widely spoken in Europe, common in engineering), and French (widely spoken in Europe, defacto language of the EU itself) are obvious and logical choices. You need to make a choice, either you limit the languages used to logical and rational ones, or you make a pigs breakfast of it and use every language under the sun.

1. Why do we still honour national patent boundaries? Are ideas somehow limited to national boundaries? Of course not, they are global and any patent should be written in the language of the inventor, then translated into either english or chinese, to then be honoured by all states when held up in court. Nations should honour the verdict of a foreign court, unless more local courts override it.

First, nations like their sovereignty. Good luck getting enforcement of Chinese law in the US or vice versa. Second, if you're going to make the patent system global, it wouldn't be prudent to limit the translations into English or Chinese. Claim construction is already a painful process, and opposing parties would submit different translations. Third, there is no incentive for a country to enforce judgments from other countries. Presumably, a nation's court decides the applicable law in that nation, barring treaties or other obligations.

allwrong wrote:

2. As the Apple - Samsung cases around the world demonstrate, national sentiments create a strong bias. The american Apple - Samsung case for example was judged by a "jury of peers", all of which happen to be american, just like Apple. That's just not good enough. I don't know how the EU-proposal addresses these concerns.

Your argument is counter-intuitive. The Samsung v. Apple case decided infringement in the US market. Samsung will be barred from selling their infringing products in the US or importing said product into the US from other countries. Samsung can do whatever it wants in the other countries. The reason this case is important is because the US is one if not the largest markets. Under your idea, the Apple v. Samsung case decided in the US would be honored in every other country.

The purported Apple bias is hilarious. I suppose you would suggest having the case set in Korea to decide the validity of the patent in the US? A jury of your peers does not mean your fellow nationals. You submit to the jurisdiction where you do your business.

allwrong wrote:

3. I think the EU ideal, a patent registered in any EU-nation should be valid in all of the EU, is equally valid on a global scale. Any patent registered anywhere should be honoured world-wide, provided a translation is available in a major language (english or chinese). The EU proposal as is does NOT require this, and is therefore flawed. It misses the opportunity to be relevant to the world and is bound to break in the future.

No. First, it is invalid because of the transaction costs. The patent system is already extremely expensive. Adding additional material and overhead would cause a lot of problems. The turnaround time is already lengthy enough as it is.

Second, the EU proposal does not require this because it would never pass muster. No country with a thriving patent system would submit themselves to this arrangement. The EU is both geographically and cultural similar; the rest of the world is not.

3. I think the EU ideal, a patent registered in any EU-nation should be valid in all of the EU, is equally valid on a global scale. Any patent registered anywhere should be honoured world-wide, provided a translation is available in a major language (english or chinese). The EU proposal as is does NOT require this, and is therefore flawed. It misses the opportunity to be relevant to the world and is bound to break in the future.

How do you actually see this working in the real world?

I can understand the sentiment and ideal, but I think that you don't actually understand the massive ramifications this "Any patent registered anywhere should be honoured world-wide" would have on patents and intellectual property. Very briefly:

1) "Patent havens" would spring up overnight. Countries where you would be able to patent absolutely anything with 0 oversight provided the fee to the government is right.

2) These numerous (and there will be millions of these) competing and duplicate patents will have one of two main effects:

- They will be respected/enforced. This would lead to massive court deadlocks and patent suits all over the world. - Patents will simply loose any value and be ignored.

3) The only way to get around the above two consequences would be to have an international central patent authority/arbiter.

So this would be exactly like the USPTO, except with x193 bureaucracy and massive divisions and bickering.

I would, in all seriousness, love to hear what sort of logic you used to reach the conclusion that "Any patent registered anywhere should be honoured world-wide" is anything remotely approaching to a good idea.

French: Language of three member states (Belgium, France, Luxembourg) as well as a common language by heritage all over Europe with regions of different countries using it. Then throw in Switzerland and you've got one you want.

I just wanted to point out the while French is spoken in Belgium, it's not the main language.

Unitary Patent will be issued by European Patent Office. Which is TRUE European institution. European Union span only big chunk of countries that are part of EPO.This is troublesome. Already EU is silently IGNORING some of patents issued by EPO (like software patents. Yes we do have them, no we do not honor them in EU).

Now even more power is granted to EPO. Strange. EU institution would be better. More control over its proceedings.

Already EU is silently IGNORING some of patents issued by EPO (like software patents. Yes we do have them, no we do not honor them in EU).

This is incorrect, EU states that are also party to the European Patent Convention (EPC), which is basically all of them by the way, cannot 'silently ignore' a granted EP patent. After grant, a EP patent has the same status as a nationally granted one.

There are (significant) differences in case law between countries on how such a granted patent should be interpreted and what the scope of protection is, but then you are already in the court room. This can hardly be called "silently ignoring".

If you have a specific example, I'd be very interested in seeing this!

Also, the EPO does not grant patents on software as such, this is explicitely not allowed by Article 52(2)c of the EPC. It is possible to try and claim "computer implemented inventions" where you claim the functionality, and not the software as such. With which I personally do not have a problem, as long as the tests on novelty and inventive step are applied correctly and thorough.

Did you know that with this patent bill, EU we will have 4 SEPARATE flavors of patents?

Which four would these be? National, EP, EU and ? As I said above, an EP patent has the same status as a national one, the EU patent will be an EP patent designating the entire EU as one country, again after grant having the same status as a national one.

The true danger of this move is the fact that the European Patent Office has been handing out thousands of "grey-area" software patents, ignoring the European Patent Convention to some extend, and interpreting the convention to fit their or the agenda of software-patent lobbyists.

What's even worse is the fact that the European Parliament and the European Court of Justice are removed from power and have no role in the Unified Patent System. No part of the UPS will be under the control of an elected legislator.

Skeptics (most prominently the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure) have argued that these lobbyists, after their attempts to explicitly legitimize software-patents failed in 2005, have been lobbying for a central patent court, which would rule in favor of the (software-)patent holder, unlike national courts that may interpret the EPC differently (read: true to the letter and spirit of the law.)

It would seem software-patent lobby-groups have succeeded in their efforts, and de facto legalized software-patents in the EU. Not only do they already have the EPO handing out patents that wouldn't hold up in sovereign courts, now they can circumvent these courts altogether. And unlike in the US, there won't be a High Court to stop them.

Under the new rules, writing the patent in English, German, or French will be enough to pass muster

There is also a very practical reason for this: those are languages with which the EPO works and understands, since the EPO will receive, examine and grant the patents it would have to be any of these languages.

In the Netherlands we have taken a practical approach to the languages (since the London Agreement), you may file in English, as long as you translate the claims. As soon as you are in the courtroom with your patent, you have to translate it in its entirety.

Being able to file in English helps you when you want to file in other countries a year later (for example with the EPO) since you already have the English text (and if you did you work correctly the English claims are also already there), saving a lot of translation costs in the first few years.

You are saying that those countries are crybabies because they require patents to be published in the language their citizens speak in return for state protected intellectual property rights? Seriously? What does Spanish society gain from a patent that most people cannot understand? Why should they take on the burden to protect such IP?

This argument works equally well for any EU language, and that's the way it used to be, but translating everything into all European languages is expensive. There had to be a cutoff point, and they put it behind the top three instead of the top five like Spain wanted.

Spain has an agenda here. They have been pushing for at least two decades the idea that the EU should have five official languages (currently the majority language of any EU country is an official EU language), conveniently including their own on the list and slicing the hairs really fine to avoid including Polish. The patent agreement basically kills this idea. They roped in Italy, but Italy is now hinting that they're going to give up their opposition and join the patent deal anyway.

Spain is very jealous of its position as a "big" country. The EU was founded between three big countries - France, West Germany and Italy, roughly equal in population - and three smaller - Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg - and several of the rules were set up based on this. As new countries were added, most were neatly slotted into one box or the other. The exception is Spain, at roughly 40 million, which was more than twice the size of the closest smaller yet missing about 20 million to really qualify for a spot at the big people's table. They were permitted as a "big" country anyway, and have been jealously guarding that position ever since.

From the article "it's an odd idea that businesses should be forced to avoid infringing patents in languages that they may not understand."

That's not an odd idea at all, that is the case for pretty much every law in every country in the world. If you live or do business in a certain country you are presumed to know the laws of this country. I can't get away with killing someone in Portugal just because I don't speak portuguese.

About the language issue in the EU, the EU has 23 official and working languages (including some very small ones such as Maltese or Irish), but most of the working documents in the commission use one of the three main languages (German, English, French) mentioned above, which are the three languages with the most native speakers in the EU. If for this issue they hadn't stuck with those 3 languages it would have been an endless debate of where the cut-off point is. If you include Spanish, why not Polish? If you include Polish, why not Dutch? etc

@Tkioz, when you say "French is the de facto language of the EU itself" you should come to Brussels one day, this may have been true in the 50's to 80's but it's not the case anymore, I live in the EU district of Brussels, Brussels itself is a mainly french speaking city but the EU district is extremely multilingual with English at its lingua franca. Signs on buildings are almost exclusively in English, ignoring French (and Dutch, the 2 official languages of Brussels). Which makes sense after the enlargement of the EU towards Eastern Europe. People from former Soviet countries might have some knowledge of German, and certainly all young people there are learning English, but very few people have any connection to French. This is a very different situation from when there were only 6 EU countries with 3 of them having French as (one of) its official languages and before the unification of Germany or the joining of the UK. Certain EU institutions such as the ECB work almost exlusively in English these days, even if their documents are still translated into French and German.

Definitely, the pro-translation-lobby in Spain has been very vocal for the past years.

Do not forget that translations can be a major source of income for patent practitioners, sometimes generating as much or more income compared to 'plain' patent filing. Simplifying or abolishing translations will have a large impact on businesses. Especially when you are in a country with less industry that generates new patent filings.

I find the language thing slightly worrying. Of course everyone could magically decide to include an English translation from the goodness of their hearts, but that won't happen, because there is no such thing as the goodness of the heart.[I'm Dutch, not English, so I'm not a crybaby asking for a translation in my own language, just in a language that actually makes international sense]

So what does this mean in practice - if a patent is filed only in French, could I claim that I didn't infringe it because I couldn't have read it?

The language issue was a sticking point for Spain and Italy, which have said they would opt out of the new system because their languages weren't given the same prominence.

Cry babies.

English: Primary language of international trade, obvious choice, as well as the official language of three member states (England, Ireland, Malta)

French: Language of three member states (Belgium, France, Luxembourg) as well as a common language by heritage all over Europe with regions of different countries using it. Then throw in Switzerland and you've got one you want.

German: Common language in engineering, spoken by a number of member states, as well as different regions (see France above).

Spanish simply doesn't make sense, nor does Italian. neither nation are industrial power houses, or economic power houses, and their languages aren't as wide spread.

Hell if anything Hungry should be the one bitching, their language is very wide-spread and would make more logical sense then either Spanish or Italian.

The sooner Spain and Italy get kicked out of the EU the better, freaking lying, corrupt, prats.

Besides the general questionability of your message, Spanish is also a much more common language all over the world than either German or French. Italy, on the other hand, is more industrialised than Britain these days, and the second biggest exporter in the EU after only Germany, go look it up.

French: Language of three member states (Belgium, France, Luxembourg) as well as a common language by heritage all over Europe with regions of different countries using it. Then throw in Switzerland and you've got one you want.

I just wanted to point out the while French is spoken in Belgium, it's not the main language.

So what does this mean in practice - if a patent is filed only in French, could I claim that I didn't infringe it because I couldn't have read it?

Most likely not, however it depends on the case. Currently, if you do business in France and infringe on a French patent, I don't think it is strange that there is no Dutch or English translation. However, if you are accused of infringing, a normal thing to do will be to check the patent you are allegedly infringing on and translate it. If you think yourself you are infringing on something (by looking at the drawings for instance) getting a translations it will also be a good idea. Merely claiming "I could not read it" is not the strongest defense.

Before grant in your example the application will only be available in French.

Currently an EP patent to be validated in individual countries may also have translation requirements. If an EP patent originally filed in French is for example to be validated in the Netherlands, currently (under the London Agreement) it is required that the description is translated into English and the claims into Dutch. All this depends on the country.

Likewise, for the EU patent, after grant there will be requirements wrt translations. Eventually, the EPO aims to make machine translations available. For the moment there will be a transitional system:

"As regards the translation arrangements for the unitary patent, it was decided to use the EPO's tried and tested language regime based on three official languages, namely English, German or French. After grant of the European patent, no further human translations will be required if the patent holder opts for a unitary patent; high-quality machine translation will be available for the purpose of informing on the content of patents.

For a transitional period - until the machine translation system is fully operational - where the language of the proceedings before the EPO is French or German a full translation of the European patent specification must be provided into English or - if the language of the proceedings is English - into an official language of a EU member state."

The language issue was a sticking point for Spain and Italy, which have said they would opt out of the new system because their languages weren't given the same prominence.

Cry babies.

English: Primary language of international trade, obvious choice, as well as the official language of three member states (England, Ireland, Malta)

French: Language of three member states (Belgium, France, Luxembourg) as well as a common language by heritage all over Europe with regions of different countries using it. Then throw in Switzerland and you've got one you want.

German: Common language in engineering, spoken by a number of member states, as well as different regions (see France above).

Spanish simply doesn't make sense, nor does Italian. neither nation are industrial power houses, or economic power houses, and their languages aren't as wide spread.

Hell if anything Hungry should be the one bitching, their language is very wide-spread and would make more logical sense then either Spanish or Italian.

The sooner Spain and Italy get kicked out of the EU the better, freaking lying, corrupt, prats.

Spanish isn't well spread ? The second most spoken language in the world? Spanish speak 387 milion peopleHungarian speak 13 milion people. Even Serbo-Croatian or Somali is spoken by more people than hungarian

Yet another comment on the language issue ... you're thrilled, I can tell.

No matter when, where, how, or by whom a patent (or contract, etc.) is challenged, it absolutely must be judged in the native language of the original author(s) and the original text. I see no way around that. We should all understand that in legal matters, particularly those involving science, medicine, and technology, each with its own nuanced vocabulary, a simple turn of phrase or choice of words can make both paupers and princes, and inspire many " conversions," if and when things land in court. Stir in obscene quantities of legalese, and I don't see how things could ever be sorted out fairly in any but the original language, no matter what it was. Nuance and intent may simply never translate well.

So, in spite of my personal desire for it to be otherwise, I can understand and support the hold-outs here, the countries that want equal treatment of their native languages. They should be allowed to file, and be judged, in their native languages. Forcing them to do otherwise may be demanding that they eventually fail in defense of any legitimate, sound, and valid patents, due to translation glitches. Not sure how to resolve that.

1. Why do we still honour national patent boundaries? Are ideas somehow limited to national boundaries? Of course not, they are global and any patent should be written in the language of the inventor, then translated into either english or chinese, to then be honoured by all states when held up in court. Nations should honour the verdict of a foreign court, unless more local courts override it.

2. As the Apple - Samsung cases around the world demonstrate, national sentiments create a strong bias. The american Apple - Samsung case for example was judged by a "jury of peers", all of which happen to be american, just like Apple. That's just not good enough. I don't know how the EU-proposal addresses these concerns.

3. I think the EU ideal, a patent registered in any EU-nation should be valid in all of the EU, is equally valid on a global scale. Any patent registered anywhere should be honoured world-wide, provided a translation is available in a major language (english or chinese). The EU proposal as is does NOT require this, and is therefore flawed. It misses the opportunity to be relevant to the world and is bound to break in the future.

i support the idea of english or chinese ( chinese beign so different from all western languages that it makes sense to make an exception) it makes sense, making it easier to understand and examine the patents. Disregarding spanish is stupid as is the second most spoken language worldwide that sounds like a dick move, looks to me like the french and the germans are just disregarding the spaniards and italians solely on the base of their current economic situation which doesn't really make sense from a patent standpoint.

my two cents...

Actually, in Europe Spanish is only spoken in Spain, which really isn't an important country either economically or technologically, sorry but it's true. That most of the Latin American world speaks Spanish has zero bearing on the EU. And besides, in the current world and current European Union, it's ridiculous to have these large populations that only speak their native language! Get with the program and upgrade your education already! (Yes, I know that France and Germany are big offenders in that aspect as well, that's what you get with their big ego's and veto rights...)

The language issue was a sticking point for Spain and Italy, which have said they would opt out of the new system because their languages weren't given the same prominence.

Cry babies.

English: Primary language of international trade, obvious choice, as well as the official language of three member states (England, Ireland, Malta)

French: Language of three member states (Belgium, France, Luxembourg) as well as a common language by heritage all over Europe with regions of different countries using it. Then throw in Switzerland and you've got one you want.

German: Common language in engineering, spoken by a number of member states, as well as different regions (see France above).

Spanish simply doesn't make sense, nor does Italian. neither nation are industrial power houses, or economic power houses, and their languages aren't as wide spread.

Hell if anything Hungry should be the one bitching, their language is very wide-spread and would make more logical sense then either Spanish or Italian.

The sooner Spain and Italy get kicked out of the EU the better, freaking lying, corrupt, prats.

Spanish isn't well spread ? The second most spoken language in the world? Spanish speak 387 milion peopleHungarian speak 13 milion people. Even Serbo-Croatian or Somali is spoken by more people than hungarian

You must be joking (or hungarian)

And where are those Spanish speakers located? The EU? Oh right... HALF WAY AROUND THE BLOODY WORLD.

It would be like including Chinese because well... it's the most spoken language in the world... never mind China isn't a member of the EU...

Yet another comment on the language issue ... you're thrilled, I can tell.

No matter when, where, how, or by whom a patent (or contract, etc.) is challenged, it absolutely must be judged in the native language of the original author(s) and the original text. I see no way around that. We should all understand that in legal matters, particularly those involving science, medicine, and technology, each with its own nuanced vocabulary, a simple turn of phrase or choice of words can make both paupers and princes, and inspire many " conversions," if and when things land in court. Stir in obscene quantities of legalese, and I don't see how things could ever be sorted out fairly in any but the original language, no matter what it was. Nuance and intent may simply never translate well.

So, in spite of my personal desire for it to be otherwise, I can understand and support the hold-outs here, the countries that want equal treatment of their native languages. They should be allowed to file, and be judged, in their native languages. Forcing them to do otherwise may be demanding that they eventually fail in defense of any legitimate, sound, and valid patents, due to translation glitches. Not sure how to resolve that.

There needs to be a cut off point it just becomes a bureaucratic nightmare. There are 20+ official EU languages, and dozens more regional dialects, do you want all of them to be supported?

Having the big three being the languages expected is a reasonable compromise, if a company is going to file a patent, it shouldn't exactly be rocket science to hire someone to translate your documents...

English: Primary language of international trade, obvious choice, as well as the official language of three member states (England, Ireland, Malta)

England doesn't have an official language.

Defacto official language (spoken by 95%+ of the population) of the United Kingdom, the language of all legal proceedings, the language of government. I somehow think that it counts.

Many nations don't have an "official" language, my own Australia doesn't have an "official language" as mandated by law, but anyone who thinks English isn't the non-official official language is off with the dingos.